3-day ban, over 400 trucks halted at Delhi bor­der

NEW DELHI: Over 400 trucks were re­turned from Delhi’s borders on the first night as a three-day ban on en­try of heavy and medium goods ve­hi­cles into the city kicked off on Fri­day. The ban had been en­forced in light of the city’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing air qual­ity.

How­ever, 1,008 trucks were al­lowed to en­ter from 11pm on Thurs­day to 6am on Fri­day as they were car­ry­ing es­sen­tial goods. Se­nior of­fi­cials said im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ban was eas­ier this year as most of the heavy ve­hi­cles that ear­lier used Delhi as a tran­sit route for their travel were now us­ing the Eastern Pe­riph­eral Ex­press­way (EPE).

The co­or­di­na­tion with the po­lice de­part­ments of Haryana and Ut­tar Pradesh also helped in turn­ing away most of the trucks be­fore it reached Delhi borders, of­fi­cials said. “We had en­sured ex­tra de­ploy­ment at all en­try points to en­sure that the ban is im­ple­mented,” said Alok Ku­mar, joint com­mis­sioner of po­lice (traf­fic). Ku­mar added that the num­bers are likely to go down fur­ther dur­ing the week­end.

The Delhi gov­ern­ment’s trans­port de­part­ment had is­sued a no­ti­fi­ca­tion re­gard­ing the three­day ban on Thurs­day af­ter it re­ceived direc­tions from the Supreme Court ap­pointed En­vi­ron­ment Pol­lu­tion (Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol) Au­thor­ity (EPCA). The gov­ern­ment has also ap­pealed to pri­vate diesel car own­ers to avoid us­ing their ve­hi­cles dur­ing this pe­riod.

As per the no­ti­fi­ca­tion, the en­try of heavy and medium goods ve­hi­cles into Delhi was banned from 11pm on Novem­ber 8 till 11pm on Novem­ber 11. How­ever, ve­hi­cles car­ry­ing veg­eta­bles, fruits, grains, milk, eggs, ice etc, and tankers car­ry­ing pe­tro­leum prod­ucts are ex­empted.

Last year, EPCA had im­posed a sim­i­lar, but longer, ban. Dur­ing that pe­riod, Delhi’s borders had turned into choke points as trucks were be­ing turned away which re­sulted in long queues of trucks along en­try points.